Israel: IAEA Hiding Iran Nuclear Evidence

The International Atomic Energy Agency is concealing information about Iran’s effort to garner nuclear weapons, senior Western diplomats and Israeli officials say.

That’s according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

IAEA inspectors have evidence from the past few months that shows Iran was chasing down information about nuclear weapons, the sources say.

That conflicts with consistent comments from IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei that the agency hasn’t seen signs that Iran is developing nukes.

The sources say IAEA inspectors in Iran produced a classified report for the agency with new evidence to that effect – a report signed by the head of IAEA’s team in Iran.

But the agency didn’t include the new information in its published reports. Senior IAEA officials in the agency’s Vienna headquarters stifled the sensitive information, the sources say.

The suppression of information may not last though. The United States, France, the U.K. and Germany are urging ElBaradei to release the new evidence in an IAEA report scheduled for release in September.

"We expect the details to appear in the new report and to be made public," a senior Western diplomat told Haaretz.

Israel has urged its allies to convince the IAEA to release the information. Israel wants to prove that Iran is continuing to develop nuclear weapons despite its claim to the contrary.

Israel has accused ElBaradei of going easy on Iran, and Israeli diplomats are worried that he will grow even more lax with his tenure as director general ending in December.

The U.S. has urged Israel in recent months not to launch a strike against Iran.

One Israeli official told The Australian newspaper that in recent discussions between the U.S. and Israel, the Obama administration said it fears a "murderous" response by Iranian proxies in Iraq against remaining U.S. soldiers in that country should Israel attack Iran.